MRE and other Ration Reviews Are a Thing

Since the invention of YouTube Red, I’ve been sucked in to various YouTube channels and themes throughout YouTube. One that I find really interesting is MRE or Meals Ready to Eat Reviews. There are also YouTubers that review the former Meal, Combat Individual ration otherwise known as the C ration and those are by far the most interesting!

These are YouTubers that are almost exclusively ration reviewers. They review US MRE rations, US Humanitarian Daily Rations, rations from other countries, as well as the older US C-Rations and other survival rations brought out by the armed forces. The channels I like the best are gundog4314, Kiwi dude, and steve1989. Each of these have their own flair and something they do that is unique!

Gundog4314 is a straight up reviewer. He reviews mostly the modern rations available to the US and other countries. Want to know what the Japanese military eats while on mission? Gundog has a review. Russia? He has a review. Gundog has reviewed rations from so many countries I can’t list them all here. Watching his reviews give you insight into how each country feeds it’s military and also learn a little about the culture of each country. Be sure to check him out!

Kiwi Dude is a New Zealander who is a lot like Gundog, but has one important difference. After he tries bites of the ration, he saves some of the ration to have “the boss” try it. “The boss” is his young daughter. The end of Kiwi Dude’s reviews are very fun because of this. His daughter is amazing and has ate and liked a great many of the “soldier foods” she’s tried. Check out kiwi dude’s channel!

Finally, the one that is the funniest is Steve 1989. Steve also writes a lot of stuff for MREinfo.com which is a great world wide resource on military rations. Since he’s the historian of the group of many  ration reviewers, he not only will review the more modern MRE’s but he also does the same for the MUCH older Meal, Combat Individual or C ration which is closer to what our grandparents who served ate while in the field. Most of the C ration reviews cause him to hold back the retching but every once in a while he finds a really old one that has stuff in it that is still edible or usable. This even includes the cigarettes which used to be packed in the rations. The retching always gives me a chuckle, but beyond that, the history of these rations is amazing. What our military eats today in the field is head and shoulders above the crackers, chocolate, and gum drop like candy that they used to issue in the C-ration. Plus most military rations in the U.S. weren’t provided with a way to heat the meal until the 90’s. The history is why I like this channel. Well that and the hilarity that ensues as he abuses himself by choking down 40 to 60 year old rations. Check him out but make sure you haven’t just ate! 🙂

Most of the YouTubers who only produce ration reviews usually don’t even show their face. Steve 1989 does but usually it’s to show him smoking a 50 year old cigarette or chomping on a 50 year old cookie. However, there are some more general food oriented channels that will do reviews.

Emmymadeinjapan will occasionally review a ration, but is more known for her reviews of snack foods from all over the world as well as other unique content. Emmy is a fun watch no matter what but her MRE reviews are pretty entertaining. She even did one outside where MRE’s are meant to be eaten! 🙂

Then there’s CultMoo. They haven’t done a ration review in a while, but when they do it’s pretty interesting. Their other content is more for the partying college student in all of us. Content from Deep Fried What (where they deep fry…well EVERYTHING), Rofl Waffle (making waffles with anything) to the bum wine reviews where they review stuff like MD 20/20 (Mad Dog) and Thunderbird wine…very much a college drinker kind of channel. One note here…don’t watch this channel without head phones if you have young children around as they do drop F-bombs and other language that your kids may not be ready for! Oh and this channel is very much Not Safe for Work! 🙂

One might ask why would you want to watch these? Well I can see many reasons. One is this is a important history lesson. A lot of us don’t really think about how our soldiers eat when on the move. This shows you how both our current soldiers and our fathers and grandfathers ate while on the move in the armed forces. Plus it shows you a unique science that many never think about: how to preserve food for an extended period of time. Lastly is if you want to think about purchasing some MRE’s or your back up food supply. It might be nice to know if you could actually eat something like this and enjoy it!

If you’s like to purchase some MRE’s, MREinfo is a great resource on how to purchase these items. While they aren’t for everyone and shouldn’t be eaten for too long, they can be a valuable source of food for your bag out or get home bag or for any situation where you don’t have all the comforts of home.

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About the Author

Joel McLaughlin
Joel is a consultant in the IT field and is located in Columbus, OH. While he loves Linux and tends to use it more than anything else, he will stoop to running closed source if it is the best tool for the job. His techno passions are Linux, Android, netbooks, GPS, podcasting and Amateur Radio.